Expectations of the Past Exhibition Unveiled in Warrington

Added: 17/04/2017

Illustrator Louise Weir returns to Warrington for a new solo exhibition, Expectations of the Past, at The Gallery at Bank Quay House in Warrington.

Inspired by Charles Dickens’ classic Great Expectations, the artist’s new work is an investigative journey of memories, identity and loss. Exploring the novel helped her examine her own personal history and emotional landscape; creating a dialogue between the text, isolated memories and specific events.

Louise has repeatedly visited locations from Dickens’ novel and those featured in her own poetry. They draw on memories of real characters and locations around her childhood home near Warrington.

In her work the Hatton-born artist creates an emotional landscape as well as a physical one. Elements fragment, reappear and echo to create a mysterious place where the stories and memories overlap, meet and converse; ‘real’ memories and ‘fictional’ narratives that co-exist in parallel landscapes converge.

Her response to location is informed by loss, memories and a new appreciation of what can be tied up in the memory of a ‘place’, especially one we call home. This dialogue between past and present is reflected in Louise’s methodology, which brings together a breadth of traditional and digital processes.

Produced with the support of Arts Council England funding the exhibition will be displayed at The Gallery at BankQuay House until July 4th and then tour to The Dickens’ Museum in 2018.

Louise Weir is an artist, illustrator and lecturer at Southampton Solent University. She grew up in Hatton, a small hamlet close to Warrington.

After a foundation year at Mid Cheshire College she moved to East Yorkshire to study a BA in Graphic Design and Illustration at Hull college of Art, followed by a postgraduate at St Martins College, London.

She currently lives in Walthamstow and works in her studio in the East End of London. She has been working within the Illustration industry for over twenty years with a wide range of experience across design, advertising, publishing and editorial. Working in the UK and worldwide for clients such as The Royal Mail, The Ministry of Sound, Penguin, The Guardian, Independent, Mail and Times newspapers.

Her work has been discussed in anthologies of Illustration including, “The Fundamentals of Illustration” by Lawrence Zeegan, Varoom, AOI World Illustration Awards, and journals published in connection with the Illustrative Best of European Illustration Berlin/Zurich 2007- 11.

Louise was a founder member of a successful Illustration collective called Monster and held a position as joint director at The Association of Illustrators. She exhibits regularly within group and solo shows throughout the UK and Europe.

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One of the points that were of main interest to us was the fact that we could plan the workspace and Martin & Peter really helped us through the process of planning the office. Since moving in we have been very impressed with their responsive and very proactive of working with us, if we have had any problems they have dealt with them straight away. They have monthly meetings where we meet up with all of the other tenants in the building and we talk through the issues we may have